


Outlier

by onward_came_the_meteors



Series: October 2020 Prompts [31]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Bruce Banner Needs a Hug, De-Serumed Steve Rogers, De-powered Avengers, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, One Shot, POV Third Person, Post-Avengers (2012), Team Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:14:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27305428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onward_came_the_meteors/pseuds/onward_came_the_meteors
Summary: The Avengers get de-powered.Except for one.
Relationships: Bruce Banner & Avengers Team, Bruce Banner & Steve Rogers
Series: October 2020 Prompts [31]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947679
Comments: 9
Kudos: 46





	Outlier

**Author's Note:**

> Day 31, for the prompt "experiment"

It really wasn’t Steve’s day.

He probably should’ve taken it as an omen, when he’d been woken up that morning before his alarm by a loud crash coming from the air vents (everyone had blamed Clint; except for Clint, who’d blamed Thor) and had been unable to get back to sleep. Maybe it was a cliche, but waking up on the wrong side of the bed really did put a damper on the rest of the day—or at least it seemed that way later, after he’d tripped in the shower, spilled coffee on his favorite jacket, and gotten a call from S.H.I.E.L.D. about hostile forces gathered in Central Park.

Two out of the three had been remedied by now, but what S.H.I.E.L.D. had failed to mention about said hostile forces was that they’d somehow managed to steal a plane that was transporting confidential scientific files (seriously, Steve was going to be having words with whoever made these decisions if they ever got out of this) and were planning to use this information to, quote: “take down the Avengers,” unquote.

Because  _ that _ always worked out well for everybody.

Steve had called them to assemble (he shouldn’t have had to; everyone else got the same messages that he did, but the day Tony listened to his voicemail was when hell froze over, Bruce’s phone was either gathering dust in his sock drawer or lying in pieces at the site of their last Code Green, Clint and Natasha were the reigning experts at leaving people on read, and Thor was still trying to claim that he didn’t know how to use Midgardian technology despite the Great Tetris Incident of last week that had ended with him and Tony not speaking to each other for seventeen hours), and because he was the captain (ha), assemble they did. Steve with his shield, Tony with his suit, Thor with his hammer, Clint with his bow, Natasha with her assorted and numerous deadly weapons, and Bruce just kind of hanging out until an explosion took out half a building and the bridge they had gathered on for their customary Captain America Pep Talk.

(Steve did not care for that name. He’d explained it a hundred times that it was for planning strategy and assignment of duties, but after a while he gave up trying to correct them).

The fight had started out like most fights did—in that it was confusing and loud and full of adrenaline and just  _ a lot at once _ , but he hadn’t been rattled by that since 1942—but after a while had gone by, Steve had slowly noticed that his teammates were disappearing one by one.

First it was Clint not answering his coms, which was basically par for the course—Clint didn’t really say  _ anything _ unless he felt like it, which was great for the silence level in the room but not as much when they were trying to coordinate battle positions—but then he’d continued to not answer, and continued, and continued, and then when Steve made his way over to the place where the archer had claimed his sniping territory, he’d found it empty. 

Then it had been Tony, which was distinctly more worrying—surely JARVIS would have kept him in communication with the others at all times? But one moment he was quipping and snarking as usual as the fight raged around them, and the next there was no sign of the little red-and-gold blur in the sky.

Bruce had been the next one to vanish, which… really? Out of all of them, Steve would’ve thought the seven-and-a-half-foot-tall neon green rage monster would be the hardest to lose track of, but the streets had been suspiciously devoid of roaring, and no matter how many alleyways Steve peered down, there was no sign of either the Hulk or his smaller alter ego.

At that point, he’d gotten really worried—he’d found Natasha and the two of them had agreed that this was  _ not normal _ , mutually and silently deciding to stick close to each other until they found out what the hell was going on—and attempted to find Thor, but of course the thunder god had also vanished into thin air, the faint crackling of electricity and the dissipating storm clouds overhead the only sign that he had ever been there at all.

Steve had been pacing up and down the street with his hand pressed to the coms in his ear, but S.H.I.E.L.D. wasn’t answering either and it had taken a few minutes before he yanked his coms out and stared in disbelief as the little red blink informed him that they were dead.

He’d spun around just in time to see Natasha crumpling to the pavement, a look of surprise on her face and something black buried in her neck. There was a faint  _ zzzzip _ , and then he’d felt the thud as he joined her. His eyes had shut before the shield had even fallen from his grip.

He’d woken up in a cell, and didn’t it say something about the current state of his life when he hadn’t even been surprised? He’d still been a little out of it for long enough that when he noticed the dizziness, the disorientation, the difficulty breathing and the heart pounding in a chest that suddenly felt constricted, he’d assumed it was just the lingering effects of whatever their enemies had undoubtedly drugged him with.

He’d forgotten so _ easily _ .

No, he hadn’t noticed anything was off until one of his captors (judging from the lab coat, they were probably a scientist gone rogue, because weren’t they always) had walked into the room, and Steve had been struck by how much  _ taller _ this man was. 

Or rather, how much shorter  _ Steve  _ was.

Something had connected in his brain, and he’d looked down to where his arms were locked in heavy restraints, only to be greeted with a sight that definitely wasn’t the physique of Captain America. 

The scientist had laughed at the expression on Steve’s face and gone off into a tangent that was probably all kinds of diabolical and melodramatic, and that Steve would surely have appreciated more if he hadn’t been preoccupied swiping the key from the man’s pocket as he’d bent over Steve to poke him with some medical tool. 

Steve had waited until the scientist left to make his escape, silently thanking Natasha for the lessons on how-to-be-a-very-bad-kidnapping-target. Settling into his new-old-new body had been surprisingly easy, like the super serum body had just been an extension of his Cap uniform and now it was time to take it off. 

(Speaking of the uniform, it was kind of falling off him right now, and he had to hike up the sleeves and tighten the belt to avoid that). 

Exploring the base of his enemies was significantly more harrowing now that he couldn’t simply punch his way out of whatever he walked into, but he’d managed, sneaking around the dark hallways and avoiding anything that even  _ looked  _ like a security camera until he could find the rest of his team and get them the hell out of… wherever they were. Definitely not New York anymore; this place was way too quiet. 

That was how the beginning of Steve’s day had gone.

His hopes that it would turn around were not very high.

“This way,” Steve said under his breath, peeking around yet another corner into a dimly lit corridor. 

He glanced quickly over his shoulder as Clint’s voice came from behind him. “And what are you basing this one on, Cap?” His teammate’s voice was tight with pain, but as Steve looked at him, Clint stood straight—or as straight as he could under the circumstances.

“The same thing I based the last one on,” Steve said. Clint waited expectantly, and Steve sighed. “Absolutely nothing, Barton, but if you’ve got any better ideas, feel free to contribute.”

He almost hoped Clint would say something, but he was disappointed, and so with a glance around at the rest of the team, Steve turned the corner and started down the hall.

He didn’t look to make sure they were following him—in Natasha’s case, he didn’t need to; his hand was wrapped firmly around her arm in a grip she could break in less than a second, but she leaned into the contact—but he knew they were anyway. What else could they do?

He should have known, when he’d woken up to find the serum drained from his cells, that this little treatment wasn’t just for him, that when their enemies said “take down the Avengers,” they’d meant  _ take down the Avengers _ , but it had still been a blow to sneak and pick and break his way into cell after cell after cell to find that each of his teammates seemed to be worse off than the last.

_ (And he’d only found four out of the five—) _

Thor was barely conscious, his limbs loose and his eyes fluttering shut and open and shut again, and it looked like it was taking all of Tony’s strength just to keep him upright. Every time Steve checked behind him, he felt a stab of guilt that Tony was practically supporting all four thousand percent muscle just by sheer gritted-teeth determination at this point, but Steve would probably have trouble throwing his own shield right now.

So he focused on Natasha instead, trying not to be disconcerted by the fact that they were now right around the same height. He guided her carefully down the hallway as she muttered nonsensical Russian into his ear and tensed at every sound. Each time, Steve held his breath and waited for her to snap his spine on the spot, but instead she merely hunched up into herself, like she was trying to hide. She didn’t recognize any of them, he didn’t think—or at least, he  _ hoped _ not, from the many and violent times she’d tried to escape when he’d first unlocked her cell—and her eyes were foggy and distant, like she was watching a movie spin out before her.

Steve couldn’t see that movie, but he was pretty convinced it was a horror.

Thor might’ve been dead weight in Tony’s arms, but there was also a good chance that he was the only thing giving Tony a reason to move forward. It hadn’t been immediately clear what was wrong with Tony, when Steve had pulled him through the door of his own cell, but it became obvious enough after Tony had frowned down at Steve and asked  _ who was he, again? _ Even now, he still asked where they were going every few minutes, like the concept of object permanence had been completely wiped from his mind along with critical thinking and memory. He’d protested at first, when Steve had taken the lead, insisting that he was fine and no bad guys had messed with  _ his _ brain, but he’d given in after “orienting” the team straight into a cement wall. The symptoms weren’t unlike those of a concussion, Steve thought; only way, way,  _ way _ out of proportion.

That was what they all were, really. Out of proportion.

Clint was trying his best to stay quiet as he brought up the rear, but even years and years of S.H.I.E.L.D. training couldn’t mask every gasp and stifled cry as his badly broken arms jostled in their makeshift sling. He was too close to passing out, and Steve really didn’t know what to do if—when—he did; Natasha wasn’t in any condition to support another person, even if her mind would clear long enough for her to go along with it, and Tony was already struggling under Thor’s weight, and Steve would try, oh he would try, but he wouldn’t last long, and there was no way they’d get another chance for an escape attempt if they failed this one. 

The others all seemed to realize that, even through the haze of pain and confusion and whatever else they’d been pumped with. Sweat clung to their skin as they labored their way down the hall, and Steve wondered if the only reason they hadn’t yet been caught was because their captors were too busy laughing at them through the security feed.

Earth’s mightiest heroes. Reduced to this.

Finally, they made it to a promising-looking door, promising-looking because of the small sign on the wall beside it that might have been written in… some non-English language, but Steve could recognize the radiation symbol easily enough. 

He had to let go of Natasha for a moment to get the door open, and she immediately tensed up. For a moment he was positive she was going to bolt, but instead she just backed into Clint, who winced and bit his lip like he was trying not to scream out loud.

It took more effort for Steve to physically pull the door open than it did for him to pick the lock, and before too long he was stepping inside the darkened cell. 

He’d had vague ideas of what to expect, all born from the way the others had looked when he’d opened their cells. He expected Bruce to be tranquilized, either unconscious or as close to that point as chemicals could make it.

Instead, once Steve’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, it was to see Bruce sitting in the center of the floor, staring blankly into nothingness and dragged with chains that seemed ridiculously large for this form.

_ I could break those, _ Steve thought, and then he stopped.  _ Wait, no, I can’t. _

The sliver of light spilling in from the open doorway must have caught Bruce’s attention, because he turned around with a faint  _ clink _ as the chains shifted. His gaze moved over the rest of the team, eyes growing wide.

“What happened to you guys?”

Steve reflexively glanced down at himself. “We were…” There really wasn’t any other word for it. “De-powered.” His gaze traveled around the cramped cell, a furrow deepening in his brow as he took in the chains again; chains that had been made for Hulk, not Banner. “I assume the same thing happened to you.”

Something about that was off, though; something not quite right.

Bruce frowned. “No. They didn’t do anything to me.”

There was a noise behind him, and Steve turned to see Tony stumbling, propping himself and Thor up on the edge of the door. Beside them, Clint was standing very, very still, eyes shut like everything would go away if he couldn’t see it, and Natasha was bit by bit edging away into the hall, muttering in a voice tinged with fear.

They could solve this particular mystery later. Preferably once they were back at the tower and all of this mess had been reversed.

“Come on, we need to go,” Steve said. He started picking his way through the room, crouching down until he could reach the place where the chains sprouted out of the floor. “Let’s just get you out of these—”

He stopped. Bruce was at his eye level now, but he didn’t react at all as Steve slid nearer to him. There was nothing but silence.

“Bruce?”

When Bruce spoke, it was in barely a whisper. “They didn’t do anything.” He glanced up at Steve, then quickly down again, like something about the sight was painful. He shook his head, a cracked laugh escaping from his throat. “Of course. Of course they didn’t do anything.” 

Steve inhaled. “Bruce.” Oh, he shouldn’t be the one sitting here—it should’ve been Tony or Natasha or Thor or somebody who could deal with this. Because Steve could give the Hulk orders in a fight or have a conversation about movies with Bruce, but when it came to talking him down from a… ( _ freak-out _ , his mind helpfully supplied) he didn’t have a clue. “We probably don’t understand everything that’s going on here yet. I can tell you, though, that the scientists who tried locking me up weren’t the sharpest tools in the shed, so I’m not surprised they couldn’t take away the—”

Bruce’s breathing was starting to speed up; Steve could hear it even with his decreased senses. “But they took the serum away from you.”

“It’s not the—”

“Oh, I know, I  _ know _ it’s not the same thing, but they should still operate on a similar principle with regard to exposure at the cellular level—” Bruce broke off. His chains were clinking as his hands came up to rub nervously together. “If they could do it for you, why couldn’t they do it for me.”

That last part was said in a smaller voice, a hollow voice.

“Maybe…” Steve searched for the words. “I’m sorry, but maybe they didn’t want to.” He made his words as soft as he could, trying to cushion the blow, but he wasn’t sure Bruce was even listening to him anymore. His teammate’s breaths were coming even faster now, and something had fractured in his eyes.

It could have been something their captors had done on purpose—that would make strategic sense, to unbalance the man bottling up the Hulk, would fit right in with their whole “Avengers-eradication” plan—or maybe… maybe this was what it took for Bruce to finally break.

Steve moved closer, still crouched on the floor. He moved carefully and directly in Bruce’s line of sight, but it didn’t seem to matter. 

“Hey. Bruce.”

Bruce didn’t answer at all this time. He’d curled himself up, and Steve couldn’t tell if he was crying or laughing. A little of both, maybe.

“Steve.” And that was Clint, his voice hardly raised above a groan. 

“I know we don’t have a lot of time, I’m working on—”

“No—Steve, look.”

And Steve did look, following Clint’s gaze away from the stubborn knot of chains and up at Bruce’s hunched form.

And…

_ Shit.  _

_ Being colorblind again is really not helpful right now. _

But there were still other signs, those telltale signs that would’ve set off JARVIS’s alarms had they been back at the tower. It was happening slowly, yes, but steadily: veins bulging out against Bruce’s skin, a dark flush radiating out from his hands.

Steve didn’t know why the transformation started there (He didn’t really know enough about the Hulk, he didn’t think—but then again, neither did any of them, not really. Maybe not even Bruce, he thought sometimes). Sometimes it was obvious why: the piece of shrapnel to the head that had sent green pooling out from under Bruce’s hair; the explosion from a faulty repulsor blowing Bruce back against the wall, starbursts of green spreading out from his spine; the shards of a shattered beaker caught in a palm no longer bleeding red. Sometimes the place it started didn’t seem to correlate at all: when his eyes would glow with radiation as the only warning to  _ get back _ , when his shirt would rip into shreds with green trails arcing out from his heart, when his mouth would be open in a silent scream as green traced down his neck like liquid.

This time it started at his hands, which clenched tightly before spasming open again, the muscles expanding even as he buried his head still deeper into his crossed arms. A paradox, that’s what Bruce was—trying to disappear when his body was enlarging with every passing second.

And it might not have been happening as fast as usual, but it was definitely happening, and Steve might ( _ might _ ) have been able to hold his own against the Hulk for a few minutes on a good day, but this—in simplest terms, this was not a good day.

“Doctor Banner,” Steve tried. There was less power behind his Cap Voice, but he ignored that and held as still as he could, keeping a careful distance away from Bruce. “You have to try and calm down. Just—”

He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned in surprise. 

Tony. His eyes half-lidded, the usual bright lights and whirring gears behind them switched off. When he spoke, his gaze kept flicking between Steve and Bruce, like they would vanish otherwise. “Maybe…”

His words sounded distorted. Was there something wrong with Tony’s voice or with Steve’s ears?

_ Probably both. _

“Maybe we should let him. One way to get outta here, right?” Tony’s hand slipped off Steve’s shoulder and made a “boom” gesture. “Smash this place up.”

Steve frowned. “I don’t like it.”

“Me neither, but it’s our best option.”

“And you’d know?” Steve regretted the words almost the second they came out of his mouth and Tony’s face filled with hurt, but a moment later his jaw was set.

“I’m  _ working _ on it. And by the way, if your guess is as good as mine right now, then why don’t you come up with a… with a…” Tony’s eyes narrowed and he slid back from Steve, his head snapping from side to side as he seemed to realign himself with the room. “Steve.”

“Yeah?”

“ _ Steve.  _ You’re Captain America, and I’m Iron Man, and we got captured and—okay. Okay. Yeah?” Tony pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. “Dammit.”

“Under normal circumstances I would say you can take a second, but we’re kinda out of seconds,” Steve said.

“No shit we are, d’you think I don’t—”

“Guys?” And that was Clint, sitting in the doorway in front of Thor’s still-passed-out form like a sentry, attempting to cradle Natasha without the use of his arms. “Don’t look now, but I don’t think your arguing is doing Banner any favors.”

Steve cursed and whipped his head back around just in time to hear the rumbling growl from Bruce’s throat as his teammate launched upward, the chains shrieking as metal bent and splintered around his wrists.

“Banner—"

“No time for that, Cap,  _ move it _ !”

And then someone was on top of Steve, practically tackling him backwards until they were both in a heap in the doorway. Stars popped in front of Steve’s eyes as the back of his head collided with Thor’s heavy chestplate.

Tony—because of course it was Tony who had knocked into him, Tony whose face was hovering inches above his own, Tony whose wide-blown eyes were staring into Steve’s as his arms planted on either side of Steve’s chest—froze. “Waitwaitwait I’m so sorry, I forgot, are you—”

“M’fine,” Steve gasped. “Get off me.”

Everyone seemed to think he’d been a fragile little piece of glass before the serum, and he elbowed Tony in the side as he rolled off him just to make sure he knew that wasn’t the case, but it did take him longer to catch his breath as he pushed himself to his feet.

But there was no time for that, no time to even stand up fully as the cramped cell began to echo with a roar that could probably be heard for miles. Tony was yanking Thor to his feet, and Clint was yelling something as Steve stumbled into him, and someone was crying out and that couldn’t be  _ Natasha— _

And Steve couldn’t take his eyes away as Bruce’s back arched, his face twisted in shadows and the growl in his throat building until—

The Hulk snapped his chains, and the whole building shook from the force of a massive fist.

* * *

Steve had been stuck in the S.H.I.E.L.D. medical bay for about a week. 

Even after the serum had been restored and his various kidnapping-and-experimentation-related injuries had healed (which, incidentally, had a lot to do with that first part), he’d been informed in no uncertain terms that he would only be leaving after the doctors declared him to have a full bill of health and  _ no sooner. _

He’d protested, but the last time he’d tried to stand up, his head had spun and he’d nearly passed out, so. Maybe there was a point there.

And at least the rest of the team shared his misery.

At the moment, they were all sprawled out in their own beds in varying degrees of complacency. The most so was, surprisingly, Clint, who had grumbled a little at first, but was maintaining a steady business-as-usual attitude even with both of his arms in heavy casts (One of the casts had a Sharpie doodle of Iron Man on it, and Steve grinned every time Clint stretched and it came into view). The least so was Thor—maybe it was a quirk of Asgardian biology that made him unable to sit still for longer than two minutes, or maybe it was just very, very,  _ very _ extreme boredom, but whatever it was, it led to quite a few incidents of one of the others shoving him back down (in Natasha’s case, literally sitting on him) to avoid a repeat of unconsciousness. 

Which it had come close to. Several times. But Thor still distrusted every single thing the doctors did, causing Tony’s running monologue of “They’re drawing blood, now they’re taking your pulse, please just chill,” to become a fixture in the medical bay.

Tony himself actually didn’t seem too bothered by this, despite his eye rolls and steady stream of more and more obscure nicknames as he went. After all, it gave him an opportunity to flex his newly healing memory.

Natasha was quieter than she normally was (in that she wasn’t on her phone taking pictures of all of them in embarrassing sleeping positions and posting them to the Avengers group chat that totally didn’t exist), and Thor couldn’t stay awake for too long, and Tony still stumbled over words sometimes, but on the whole, they were getting better.

Well. Not entirely on the whole.

To make that assumption, Steve would’ve had to include Bruce, and for that, he would have actually needed to  _ see _ his teammate sometime in the past four days.

Unlike the rest of them, Bruce hadn’t had any physical or mental injuries to recover from, and so had promptly fucked off to whatever corner of a S.H.I.E.L.D. lab had given him a space to research the experiments their captors had done on all of them. Apparently when repurposed, some of the methods might be able to have beneficial applications… yada yada. Steve didn’t really care. His main problem was that he hadn’t seen his teammate in four days.

Unfortunately, he was strictly prohibited from leaving this stupid bed. 

He’d told them it was unnecessary, that as soon as the serum took hold again, his body would function just the way it had before. They’d have their Captain America back.

The doctors had given him an unimpressed look and continued taking his blood pressure.

Steve shifted in his blankets for a few minutes when he caught Tony staring at him. “What?”

Tony didn’t blink. “What?”

“What are you looking at?”

“What are  _ you _ looking at?”

Clint groaned from the corner. “Dear God, please stop. These painkillers don’t extend to my head.”

Both Steve and Tony ignored him, and Tony swung himself up off of his chair and around to sit on the end of Steve’s bed.

“How’re you holding up, Cap? Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll feel all in fighting fit once you get your tights back on.”

Steve shook his head. “Those got ruined when we were captured. Sorry to disappoint.”

“You should be.” Tony smoothed a wrinkle out of the edge of the bed. “C’mon, what’s eating you?”

“Well, first of all, if you could remove your entire body weight from my leg, that’d be great.”

Tony did so, with much muttering about “so much for super soldier strength.”

Steve sighed. “And second of all, I’m worried about Bruce.”

“ _ Yeah _ .” Tony’s response was more emphatic than Steve would’ve expected, but maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised. This was Tony and Bruce, after all. It was already a miracle that they’d managed being separated for this long.

“Has anybody even seen him since the whole…” He didn’t know what to call it, but apparently he didn’t have to.

Natasha looked up from her perch on the bed across from Steve’s. Her hair was pulled back, but more in a haven’t-showered-in-days way than a ready-for-action way. It hadn’t taken long to reverse the effects of whatever their captors had drugged her with, but she was still shaken enough to start whenever someone spoke just out of her line of sight. “He was hanging around while the rest of you were getting treated. I figured he was either helping the doctors or keeping an eye on you.”

Steve wasn’t sure whether Natasha’s “you” meant himself or Tony, but he didn’t ask.

“You’d think if he wanted to keep an eye on us, he wouldn’t fucking  _ vanish _ ,” Tony muttered.

Natasha shrugged. “He’s probably off moping someplace. You know how he gets after missions.” And her words were light, but her eyes didn’t move as she spoke, and the other part, the part where  _ all  _ of them “got like that” after missions, went unsaid.

“How many times do I have to tell you, Romanoff—super-geniuses do not mope. We brood.”

Natasha ignored that (wisely, in Steve’s opinion), and instead pulled out her phone and started typing something. 

“You’re not texting him.”

Natasha didn’t answer, pressed one last button, and then slid the phone back into her pocket, lifting her gaze to the two of them with an archly amused look.

“That’s never gonna work,” Steve said.

Natasha raised her eyebrows. “Guess we’ll find out.”

And sure enough, about eight and a half minutes later (there wasn’t much else to do in the medical bay besides watch the clock), Bruce stepped inside, borrowed clothing under his lab coat and what was probably his twelfth pair of glasses in the last month dangling from his pocket.

Steve’s shoulders lowered a little in relief—sure it might have been irrational, but at least now he knew his whole team was all right. Physically, at least.

Bruce looked straight at Natasha and held up his own phone. “I know Tony isn’t flatlining, so what’s this really about?” 

Steve grinned, catching Natasha’s eye, and she winked at him before answering Bruce. “Don’t ask me; these two are the ones getting lonely without your company.”

Bruce followed her gaze to Steve and Tony on the bed, and his face tightened. “I’m not so sure about that.”

Steve sat up higher, propping up the pillow behind him. “You saved us.”

“Don’t say that.”

“S.H.I.E.L.D. never would have found us if you hadn’t—”

“But I shouldn’t have been able to, not if those scientists had done the same thing to me that they did to all of you—and they  _ didn’t _ !”

_ They didn’t do anything to me. _

Steve could practically hear the words aloud, echoes from that dark cell in the heart of the enemy base, and wondered how many times they had repeated over and over in Bruce’s head in the last four days as his teammate tried to bury himself in lab work. He silently cursed himself for not trying to find him sooner. 

Bruce gestured wildly in the air for a moment before realizing what he was doing and shoving his hands in his pockets, forcibly taking a breath and pulling himself calm before he spoke again.

(And Steve had seen him do this a million times: reign in his emotion, his fear, his hurt, his anger, and push it all down, but it still kind of hurt Steve’s chest to watch, and not because of any lingering asthma).

“Out of all of us,” Bruce started, and then he stopped. “All of you. The one person they didn’t hurt was me. Why do you—” He stopped again, Started again. “I…” 

Tony’s voice was low. “Bruce, if you’re still on that bullshit about trying to ‘cure’ yourself or whatever in the  _ hell— _ ”

Bruce shook his head violently. “No, that’s not it.” He shrugged. “I guess it’s good that it’s not, because if this proved anything, it’s that that isn’t possible.”

Natasha made a motion that she stopped at the last second. Clint’s eyes were huge beneath the dark circles.

“They took away your…  _ attributes _ … because they wanted to weaken us. Take us out, tear us up. And the fact that they didn’t do anything to me—they thought I could already make that happen. Without changing one bit.”

Steve winced at the bitterness in that last sentence. “Bruce, you can’t assume—” But Tony was already holding a hand up in front of Steve, the same position he would use if he were in the armor ready to fire.

“I’ll take this one, thanks. Bruce, pardon me, but what you just said is bullcrap. If those idiots wanted us dead dead, we’d be dead dead. They were just having a laugh, or a cackle, or whatever it is supervillains do. If they wanted to mess with anything, they were messing with our heads, and you’re letting it work.” Tony paused, and Steve knew he was marking Natasha’s almost imperceptible flinch at “mess with our heads.” 

He switched to a lighter tone. “Besides, if their goal was really to ‘tear us apart,’ they wouldn’t bother keeping you exactly as you are, because I’m pretty sure you’re the one to blame as to why Rogers and I haven’t killed each other yet.”

Steve raised his eyebrows. “Don’t tempt me, Stark.”

It was the truth. Natasha never did much to intervene in arguments other than the occasional snide comment, Clint wasn’t even aware half the time when people were arguing or not and simply sat there with his brain set to screen saver, and Thor did his best, but always ended up either taking a side or making his own and amplifying the argument by ten. Bruce was the only one who reminded them of priorities, and he must have recognized that at least a little, because he stopped twisting his hands around each other and met Tony’s eyes.

Tony grinned. “Most of the time, anyway,” he added. “I still think you’re the one behind that leaked-out photo of me and Thor in the S.H.I.E.L.D. barracks.”

“Every new thing I hear about this photo makes me want to see it more,” Clint said. Natasha’s mouth curved up as she threw him a look.

“Unfortunately, S.H.I.E.L.D. had it taken down.”

“Unfortunately,” Steve echoed.

He thought Clint was going to fall out of his bed—and he might have, if his casts hadn’t been so thoroughly secured in. “You’ve seen it?”

Steve let his eyes widen in his best 1940s-innocence face, and Clint cursed under his breath.

Bruce was still standing there, his hands running through his hair, and Steve’s gaze softened.

“Hey. C’mere.”

He patted the side of his mattress and Bruce mechanically walked over and sat down, as close to the edge as he could.

Bruce let out a breath. “I’m sorry, I know all of us should be focusing on recovering, not… that. That’s why I was in the lab—I didn’t want you guys to have to deal with—”

“Trust me, Banner,” Steve said. “As long as Stark is on the team, you are nowhere near the top of that list.”

Tony leaned back against the end of Steve’s bed. With the addition of Bruce, the amount of available space had decreased, leaving Tony to drape himself at the bottom while Steve shifted awkwardly in front of the pillow and Bruce perched in between the two of them on the edge. “Oh yeah? Last time I checked, you were the one being sued by the National Air and Space Museum.”

“Listen, if they want me to give the suit back I can give the suit back,” Steve said. “I just doubt they’d want it back after it’s been in the Potomac.”

“Sure, that’s the  _ only _ reason…”

And Steve let himself be baited into this, because he was pretty sure Clint had fallen asleep and Thor had woken up, even though both of them were pretending otherwise, and Natasha had settled back into her own pillow, looking like she was about halfway there herself, and Steve wasn’t  _ positive _ , but he thought he could see Bruce relaxing just the slightest bit.

And that was enough for now.

**Author's Note:**

> And so, the month is complete \ (•◡•) /
> 
> Thanks for reading, and happy Halloween!


End file.
